good-sized cupboard, and was illuminated in the day-time by a window
commanding a pleasant prospect of coal-shed and dead wall. The paper on
the walls was dark and greasy with age; and every bit of clumsy,
bulging deal furniture in the room had been transformed into a kind of
ebony by the action of time and dirt, the greasy backs and elbows of
idle loungers, the tobacco-smoke and beer-stains of half a century.

It was evident that the two men smoking and drinking in this darksome
little den belonged to the seafaring community. In this they resembled
each other; but in nothing else. One was tall and stalwart; the other
was small, and wizen, and misshapen. One had a dark, bronzed face, with
a frank, fearless expression; the other was pale and freckled, and had
small, light-gray eyes, that shifted and blinked perpetually, and
shifted and blinked most when he was talking with most animation. The
first had a sonorous bass voice and a resonant laugh; the second spoke
in suppressed tones, and had a trick of dropping his voice to a whisper
whenever he was most energetic.

The first was captain and half-owner of the brigantine 'Pizarro',
trading between the port of London, and the coast of Mexico. The second
was his clerk, factotum, and confidant; half-sailor, half-landsman;
able to take the helm in dangerous weather, if need were; and able to
afford his employer counsel in the most intricate questions of trading
and speculation.

The name of the captain was Valentine Jernam, that of his factotum
Joyce Harker. The captain had found him in an American hospital, had
taken compassion upon him, and had offered him a free passage home. On
the homeward voyage, Joyce Harker had shown himself so handy a
personage, that Captain Jernam had declined to part with him at the end